Role of Victims in the Criminal Process
This a 2 part question. Please separate the sources under each part.
-550 words (2 pages) each and 3 sources each.
-Scholarly sources must be published within the past 5-10 years of the current date.
Part 1
Explain the various roles that crime victims serve in assisting criminal analysts with the apprehension of criminals.
Part 2
Explain how the different types of “crime mapping” strategies can be used to identify vulnerable neighborhoods prone to crime in order to develop and implement crime prevention strategies.
Role of Victims in the Criminal Process
A victim is the recipient of crime during a criminal activity and in most cases, he or she is left harmed, duped or tricked or has come to feel helpless and passive in case of a misfortune or an act of ill-treatment. Some of the crimes that lead to victimization include rape, child abuse, fatal crimes, arson, and drunk driving. In most cases, the victim is used by police agencies to play a certain role during the process of investigations and criminal trials in a court of law. These victims are put under different categories during the process such as witness protection, participating and prosecuting the witness.
The current role of a victim is being a witness for the state. These victims are awarded various protective measures during the criminal trial process (Victorian Law Reform Commission, 2016). The protective measures are awarded to the victims to avoid secondary victimization and restrict relying on the gender stereotypes that are wrongful in cases of sexual offenses. Victims also play a role in the prosecution. The victims decide whether to continue or discontinue a prosecution or whether to agree to a negotiable plea settlement with the accused rather than go on with the trial in a court of law.
The law allows prosecutors to make prosecutorial decisions without interference from the judiciary. There is a range of factors that prosecutors consider that include the seriousness of the crime, the strength of evidence, the effects of crimes on victims, the law enforcement resources and agendas (Kirchengast, 2016). If there are eyewitnesses in the crime scene, the better it is for the prosecutors. A crime that attracts public outrage may result in having an increased availability of prosecutorial resources. Prosecutors rely on victims for information within the exercise of discretion.
In most cases, the victim is responsible for the charges incurred during an investigation process. The victims of the white-collar crimes have resources and diligence to present a compiled and well-completed investigation case to the prosecutor. There isn’t a constitutional implication of whether these resources are utilized before or after the prosecutor is involved. Limiting or precluding the help of a victim is not a requirement from the constitution. When the police capture a case of shoplifting through the security cameras, the cost of the conviction process is incurred by the victim.
A wall of separation between the victim and prosecutor is not allowed for any constitutional reason. Prosecutors are expected to consider the victim’s interests. During cases of assault, the victim needs to consult the police first and report the case, state the details of the incident, help in identifying the perpetrator, testify at the trial in a court of law and make a victim impact statement in case the perpetrator is convicted. The participation of the victim is accrued to benefit the state and in this case, the victim incurs the cost of the whole process.
Nowadays, getting involved in the criminal process as a victim imposes so many burdens such as victimization by the crime and the whole criminal process (Cole, Smith & DeJong, 2018). This makes participation in assisting law enforcement agencies difficult. Victims have continually shown dissatisfaction with the criminal processes, prosecutors and institutions or agencies that make up the criminal justice system. The reforms made have generally focused on children and victims with impairments, vulnerable victims and those of sexual offenses and serious crimes.
Crime mapping
In crime analysis, clarifying where crimes and other dangerous incidences occur is one of the important functions. Crime mapping is a sub-discipline of crime analysis although its role is very vital in helping track down locations where criminal activities take place (Santos, 2016). There are three main functions of crime mapping which include, facilitating statistical and visual analyses of the spatial crime nature, providing a map that helps in communicating analysis results and allowing to connect sources of data based on common geographic variables, such as census information or data from a common area.
Crime mapping is applied in crime analysis in tactical crime analysis, strategic crime analysis, and administrative crime analysis. They are used in identifying vulnerable neighborhoods prone to crimes and providing solutions (Weisburd & McEwen, 2015). In tactical crime analysis, crime mapping is used to identify immediate crime patterns such as auto theft, commercial and residential burglary. In detail, revealing a cluster of activities at a specific area that indicates a pattern of crime is done by spatial analysis of auto theft incidents. Crime mapping in strategic crime analysis is used in long-term applications where relationships between criminal activity and indicators of the disorder are analyzed.
Examples of the indicators of the disorder include a high number of vacant houses or disorder calls from service. It is also used to allocate resources in a geographic and temporal manner, to determine crime patterns in specific areas such as schools and hospitals, to acquire information about the crime rates such as the number of residential burglaries per household and to incorporate the data of crime with a qualitative geographic information such as drugs in circulation, joints where there is prostitution, traces of students’ routes to school and the hangout joints of teenagers.
Crime mapping in administrative crime analysis helps the police, researchers and the media to convey the information of criminal activities to the public. The police department and the news organizations use websites to routinely post maps that depict areas prone to crime along with corresponding tables and definitions. For example, to reduce the citizen request for their neighborhood crime information, the police agency releases a monthly or weekly crime maps on their websites that are easily accessible by the citizens at the convenience of their homes or the local library.
The point features are depicted on a GIS-generated map using a symbol or label (Shafique, Zahra, Farid & Sharif, 2017). The line features are represented on a map using a single line or a set of lines. There are different types of crime mapping that include single-symbol mapping which represents features such as the locations of stores, states, and roads. The buffers are specified areas around the features on a map. They can be a set of small distances such as 50-500 miles depending on the purpose of the scale on the map. Graduated mapping is often used by crime analysts. Different sizes and colors on this map represent particular variables.
Generally, the current role of a victim is being a witness for the state. These victims are put under different categories during the process such as witness protection, participating and prosecuting the witness. They are awarded various protective measures during the criminal trial process according to their categories. In crime analysis, clarifying where crimes and other dangerous incidences occur is one of the important functions. Crime mapping is applied in crime analysis in tactical crime analysis, strategic crime analysis, and administrative crime analysis. They are used in identifying vulnerable neighborhoods prone to crimes and providing solutions.
References
Victorian Law Reform Commission. (2016). The role of victims of crime in the criminal trial process. Victorian Law Reform Commission.
Kirchengast, T. (2016). Victims and the Criminal Trial Process. In Victims and the Criminal Trial (pp. 1-46). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Cole, G. F., Smith, C. E., & DeJong, C. (2018). The American system of criminal justice. Cengage Learning.
Santos, R. B. (2016). Crime analysis with crime mapping. Sage publications.
Weisburd, D. L., & McEwen, T. (2015). Introduction: Crime mapping and crime prevention. Available at SSRN 2629850.
Shafique, I., Zahra, S. A., Farid, T., & Sharif, M. (2017). Role of GIS in Crime Mapping & Analysis. Sukkur IBA Journal of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, 1(2), 39-47.
